


things the stars can't answer

by rhiannonwrites



Series: Rhiro's Aroaceing the Line 2021 [1]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Aromantic Character(s), Aromantic Oscar Wilde (Rusty Quill Gaming), Aromantic Sasha Racket, Bonding, Gen, Queerplatonic Relationships, RQG 179, Stargazing, Stars, aroaceingtheline2021, queer solidarity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:47:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29644605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhiannonwrites/pseuds/rhiannonwrites
Summary: Day 1: Pride –Doubt–Stars–White
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sasha Racket & Oscar Wilde, Zolf Smith & Oscar Wilde, Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Series: Rhiro's Aroaceing the Line 2021 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2178327
Comments: 24
Kudos: 41
Collections: AroAceing the Line





	things the stars can't answer

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1: Pride – **Doubt** – **Stars** – **White**

Sasha is sitting on the roof of the bunkhouse, doing knife tricks while she watches the stars make their arcing journey across the sky, when she hears footsteps behind her. She recognizes them as Wilde’s almost immediately, and she leans back until she’s propped up on her elbows, craning her neck to look at him upside down. “Bit cold to be sitting out here,” he says, pulling his coat more tightly about himself.

She only shrugs in answer. “How’d you get up here, Wilde?” She asks with a teasing grin. “Didn’t stick you for much of a climber.”

“You’re right, I’m not.” He returns the grin, and she’s suddenly struck by the realization of how much she’s missed seeing him smile so freely. “There’s a ladder at the back of the building,” he says, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. Sasha turns her gaze in that direction and sees that, sure enough, there is a ladder there. “You just happen to do everything the hard way.”

She shrugs again. “I like a challenge.” That makes him laugh. She wasn’t trying to be funny, but it’s such a delightful sound that she doesn’t question him.

“I think you like showing off. Though I can imagine doing things the easy way would get quite boring for you very quickly.” Wilde muses. Then, “do you mind if I sit with you for a bit?”

“Go ahead.” She watches him as he comes to sit down next to her. “You alright? Can’t sleep or somethin’?” She asks, frowning in concern as she recalls the insomnia that had plagued him all those months ago; mere weeks for her.

Wilde shakes his head. “No, no. Nothing so serious as that. I did wake up, but I could have gone back to sleep if I had really wanted to. But I noticed you weren’t in bed and thought I might come to see if you wanted some company. I hope my assumption was correct, given that found you on top of the first building I looked on. Or, rather, that I found you at all.”

She smiles at him. “Got me there, Wilde,” she says. Then she notices how the moonlight catches in his hair when he shifts his head a certain way. “I like your hair.” It looks almost silver. “Looks good. Shiny.”

That gets another smile out of him. “Thank you, Sasha,” he says. His eyes flick to the messy patch of white hair at the back of her own head. “Yours is much cooler, though.”

She scoffs at him but has to look away to hide the smile that tugs at the corners of her mouth. She felt rather self-conscious about it, given how embarrassing the story behind it was, but his words filled her with warmth, anyway.

They sit in companionable silence for a long while after that until, finally, Sasha is the one to break it.

“So,” she says, her lips twisting into a smirk as she looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “You and Zolf a thing now or what?”

Wilde frowns, turning his head to look at her in confusion. “What?”

Well, that wasn’t exactly the reaction she’d been expecting. “You’re like—” she pauses while she tries to figure out if she’s severely misread something, or if Wilde is in denial about his and Zolf’s relationship. She can’t exactly draw from personal experience, but Zolf and Wilde certainly _seem_ to love each other, based on how they compare to a lot of couples. Maybe not as touchy, but they do _act_ like a couple a lot of the time. “’Re you like… y’know, together? You’re not just mates, I don’t think.” She frowns as the doubt sets in. Maybe she really was reading something into it that wasn’t there. “I dunno. I’ve never really been in love with anyone like that so I might just be lookin’ at it all wrong, but like… you two got real close while the rest of us were gone and you two have just been acting different lately. I—sorry…”

Wilde’s frown deepens momentarily while she speaks, but then he lets out a soft, breathy chuckle and his face eases back into a gently smile that (unbeknownst to Sasha) he saves for her alone. He turns away again, drawing his knees up to his chest and crossing his arms on top of them, tipping his head back to look at the stars. “Don’t be sorry, Sash. It’s… not very easy for me to explain. We aren’t really ‘just mates’,” he admits. “But I don’t think I’d call us a couple, either. At least, not in the way you’re probably thinking.” He pauses for a moment and Sasha realizes that Wilde, who words usually come to so easily, is thinking of what to say next.

“Zolf is incredibly important to me. I would trust him with my life. And, well, he just proved me very right. I’d literally be dead without him.” Wilde laughs again. Sasha frowns. “I’d truly be happy to spend my life with him. But I wouldn’t say that I have romantic feelings for him.” He hesitates again, before continuing. “And I never have. Not for Zolf and not for anyone else, for that matter.” He glances at her again. “I suppose we have that much in common.”

Sasha’s frown deepens, her eyebrows furrowing. “You’ve been, like, _with_ people though.”

Wilde shrugs. “Never in any sense beyond physical. Never anything more than one-night engagements, usually for my own gratification or personal gain. None of those ever would have gone anywhere.”

She nods slowly. She’s still not sure she _quite_ gets what he’s saying, but she understands more than she did a few moments ago. She lays back onto the thatched roof with a sigh, looking at the stars as if they’ll give her answers to the many questions currently running through her head, mostly about herself. She knows they won’t. Wilde, on the other hand, might be of some help.

They talk until the sun breaks the horizon. Sasha watches the stars until they slowly fade out of sight. Wilde watches Sasha teach herself new knife tricks.


End file.
